mosaic in Sant-Apollinare-Novo, at Ravenna. As the belief in the
superior power and sanctity of the Blessed Virgin grew and spread,
the angels no longer attended her as princes of the heavenly host,
guardians, or councillors; they became, in the early pictures,
adoring angels, sustaining her throne on each side, or holding up
the embroidered curtain which forms the background. In the Madonna by
Cimabue, which, if it be not the earliest after the revival of art,
was one of the first in which the Byzantine manner was softened and
Italianized, we have six grand, solemn-looking angels, three on each
side of the throne, arranged perpendicularly one above another.
The Virgin herself is of colossal proportions, far exceeding them
in size, and looking out of her frame, "large as a goddess of the
antique world." In the other Madonna in the gallery of the academy,
we have the same arrangement of the angels. Giotto diversified this
arrangement. He placed the angels kneeling at the foot of the throne,
making music, and waiting on their divine Mistress as her celestial
choristers,--a service the more fitting because she was not only queen
of angels, but patroness of music and minstrelsy, in which character
she has St. Cecilia as her deputy and delegate. This accompaniment
of the choral angels was one of the earliest of the accessories, and
continued down to the latest times. They are most particularly lovely
in the pictures of the fifteenth century. They kneel and strike their
golden lutes, or stand and sound their silver clarions, or sit like
beautiful winged children on the steps of the throne, and pipe and
sing as if their spirits were overflowing with harmony as well as love
and adoration.[1] In a curious picture of the enthroned Madonna and
Child (Berlin Gal.), by Gentil Fabriano, a tree rises on each side
of the throne, on which little red seraphim are perched like birds,
singing and playing on musical instruments. In later times, they play
and sing for the solace of the divine Infant, not merely adoring, but
ministering: but these angels ministrant belong to another class of
pictures. Adoration, not service, was required by the divine Child
and his mother, when they were represented simply in their
divine character, and placed far beyond earthly wants and earthly
associations.

[Footnote 1: As in the picture by Lo Spagna in our National Gallery,
No. 282.]

There are examples where the angels in attendance bear, not harps
o